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Gingerbread, Doughnuts, Etc

A fried doughnut made with gingerbread-flavored dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Gingerbread, Doughnuts, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, milk, eggs, melted butter, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is workable.

  3. Flavor the dough with cinnamon, nutmeg, or vanilla.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out a portion of the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Heat deep fat in a pot and fry 4 to 6 doughnuts at a time until golden brown.

  3. Roll out only a part of the dough at a time.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnut surface brown when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Melted butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and adds richness.

The step that matters

Fry 4 to 6 doughnuts at a time until golden brown. Frying too many at once drops the oil temperature, so doughnuts absorb more oil and turn greasy and dense instead of crisp and golden.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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